Lots of performance venues call themselves a
“factory”—Warhol’s Factory and New York City’s Knitting
Factory come to mind—but Revolution Hall, the Troy Pub &
Brewery’s new venture, really was a factory—an 1860s collar
factory, in fact, that contributed to Troy’s industrial
prominence in the 19th century. And now the old brick building
is contributing to the city’s revival as an arts mecca: The
four-story structure has been reconfigured as a
state-of-the-art concert hall, theater, and studio. Yet
despite its cutting-edge acoustics, the hall is keeping one
foot firmly in the city’s egalitarian past.

“Gary [owner Garrett Brown] and I were thinking about
calling it Riverfront Hall,” says manager Chris Ryan. “We’re
proud of being on the river, but we both wanted something more
Troy-related.” Says Brown: “Chris came up with ‘Revolution
Hall,’ and we all liked it because it comes from the
Industrial Revolution that Troy was so renowned for. It’s what
the building is all about.”

Ryan adds that they also wanted to acknowledge Troy’s
history as a hotbed of labor uprisings. “The Molly Maguires,
the pro-labor group, were from here,” he says. “And Irish
labor organizer James Connelly lived here.” Stepping inside
the capacious hall, it’s easy to imagine it as a place where
tunes and beer will foster solidarity as in days of old. (The
hall opens on Saturday, Feb. 1, with an appearance by Celtic
act Hair of the Dog.) Brown says his inspiration for the hall
came directly from his customers, whose enthusiastic quaffing
of the pub’s homebrew funded the project’s construction. “I
wanted to give them back something special,” he says.

Brown bought the factory in 1994, a year after
establishing the Troy Pub in the warehouse next door. “I
bought the buildings because they were cheap, and had the
river behind them,” he says. “I looked at places all over the
Capital Region—I didn’t have any knowledge of Troy then. But I
have tons now.” Brown says his interest in the old structures
led him to become an aficionado of Troy history, and he
proudly displays one of the city’s famed detachable collars,
found amid the debris. “This is a good thing for us, of
course, but it’s what’s best for the building,” he says of the
conversion. “And it’s what the city wants for the waterfront.”
It’s also what local music fans want. Shows at the Troy Pub,
and outdoor music festivals on its riverfront deck, were
overflowing capacity. “We’ve been providing music ever since
we started here,” Brown says. “The hall just raises the bar.”

And raises it two stories high. The main stage
encompasses two floors, with an open ceiling surrounded by a
balcony with VIP visibility from every seat. The factory’s
turn-of-the-century addition has been turned into a large
lobby, with plenty of room for ticket booths and loitering in
line from the River Street entranceway (where patrons will
pass by an artifact from the collar company: the decorative
door to a huge vault located in the basement). Above the lobby
is a 24-track recording and video studio, which will allow for
live recordings and direct broadcast. Ryan, who estimates the
hall will hold 700 to 800 patrons, says the studio could make
it a destination for high-profile acts looking to fine-tune
their live shows. The factory’s 1899 freight elevator, they’ve
discovered, is just the thing for hauling music equipment
between the two floors.

Used as a warehouse for the last hundred years, the
hall has the auditory advantage of having been converted in
tandem with the installation of its customized sound system,
designed by Richard Dalbec of Dalbec Audio Lab. Dalbec
describes the system as a theater-style design built for
resonance. “It will capture every nuance at every level,” he
promises. Dalbec and Brown worked on “room corrections” during
construction, and it was Dalbec who spotted the potential of a
pile of office partitions junked on the fourth floor. Filled
with high-density fiberglass, the partitions were adapted into
sound panels. “Everything we build ourselves helps to keep
prices affordable,” notes Brown. The panels also blend in well
with the room’s painted brick walls and exposed pipes—although
for this high-tech venue, the chic industrial ambience came
with the deed.

Before opening the Troy Pub, Brown was a photographer
who worked for the Schenectady Gazette for over a
decade, yet he happily admits his structural ideas for the
factory came from not from his visual training, but from “five
years of having a couple of pints and walking around looking
at it.” Brown and a crew of friends, family, and pub employees
did nearly all the construction themselves. “We’re a small
company, but everyone is multitalented,” he says. “And if
they’re not, they learn,” he jokes. (As if on cue, brewmaster
Peter Martin motors by on a manlift.) Foreman Brown did the
welding and metalworking. “He took out a two-story brick wall
and staircase and put in the steel I beams,” says Ryan
admiringly. Brown’s father Sid did the electrical work, and
the pub’s property manager did the carpentry. As for sound
engineer Dalbec, he falls under the “friends” category, and he
readily admits he moved his audio business to nearby King
Street to be walking distance from the pub.

Ryan, the pub’s manager since it opened, also manages
the hall and books the bands. The room’s open configuration
gives him a lot of leeway. For folk acts, he explains, the
floor will be set with tables and chairs. For larger, rowdier
bands, the setup will be cleared away, although there will
always be cocktail tables, and eventually a service bar, on
the balcony. “We want to give people a nice experience,” he
says. Just how open the booking policy will be has yet to be
determined. “We’re going to see who regionally brings people
in,” he says. “We want artistry, but we’ve also got a big room
to fill.” Ryan’s wish list ranges from Ani DiFranco to Moby to
the Doobie Brothers, along with Black 47, who’ve already been
scheduled.

But mostly, he emphasizes, booking will be determined
by the customers. “They’re the ones who are going to tell us
who they want.”